Pierre Gasly says his Toro Rosso STR13 was “completely broken” after a clash with Fernando Alonso early in the Italian Grand Prix, labelling the McLaren driver’s approach as “not fair”.
Gasly started from ninth on the grid but lost ground on the opening lap, and tried to reclaim the position against Alonso at the restart.
“Basically we came to Turn 1 after the Safety Car side-by-side and I went on the outside and he pushed me completely out of the track,” said Gasly, who came home in 14th.
“I tried to stay on track as much as I could but he didn’t leave me the space so I had to jump over the kerb and then he also touched me and completely damage the right side of my floor.
“From there on from lap eight or something the car was completely broken and I was sliding everywhere.
“I think his [Alonso’s] approach is a bit different because he knows he is not going to be in Formula 1 next year so it looks like he is behaving more aggressive than we was before.
“Today for me what he did was not fair and we know that if you is alongside you need to leave space for one car and today he didn’t.”
Gasly nonetheless reckons the clash did not affect his chance of scoring points, believing he and Toro Rosso exceeded expectations in qualifying before regressing to the norm.
“In the pit stop I lost a position to Charles [Leclerc] and Stoffel [Vandoorne] as well, five or six seconds there,” said Gasly.
“Without it P12 was the best we could have done.
“Yesterday was amazing but objectively we out-performed the potential we have and it was a bit better than what we would have been able to do with the package we have.
“Today P12 was more or less where we would have been.”
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